I’m not in the habit of reviewing books, but sometimes there’s a story that filters into my heart and feels as if it has changed my soul in a subtle way.
the premonition, by banana yoshimoto, translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda
I borrowed this book, the physical copy, from the local library. It caught my eye as I wandered through the stacks, partly because of the blue background, partly because the title and author name are in lowercase, which is unusual.
Reading a story that has been translated is a specific and important kind of experience, I think. Even though I don’t speak Japanese, and even though I have never met the author or the translator, there is a heavy sense of cultural experience that is both the same as what I know and entirely different.
It’s a short book, only 133 pages. As I turned each page, I noticed how many of them had been carefully folded down and then straightened out again, to mark a place for some other reader. There were more dog-eared pages than I would have expected for a short novel, but I think after reading it I can understand why a person would need to pause and reflect and feel before continuing on.
Without spoilers, I just wanted to acknowledge the ways this story felt real to me. The experience of premonition and the kind of knowing that happens to a certain kind of person — that is a thing I understand, and it is very difficult to properly describe. Somehow, the author captured some of that otherly, disconnected yet connected, underwater feeling.
Reading this book was like pausing and allowing the story to come to me as it was. Reading this book was like a tea ceremony, measured and careful and holy and warm and whole unto itself. Reading this book reminded me that life goes in directions we don’t know, and that we do know even when we don’t consciously know it.
As a person whose childhood memories are all but hidden from me — I did that myself, I had a very traumatic childhood — I could relate so achingly to the protagonist of the story.
As a person who is on an Asian drama binge, I appreciated the brief dipping into the thoughts and feelings of someone Japanese. I appreciated the things that are the same and especially the things that are not.
I have no idea how to give this book a star rating. It is the story that it is, and I think it’s beautiful.
If you read this book too, I would love to hear what you thought and felt about it. And how many times you needed to pause and turn down a page to keep your place while you absorbed it.
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It’s been … months since I wrote here. We decided to move our family’s various domains and data to one account, which meant a lot of backend stuff and waiting on DNS to propagate and so on, and then (you know how it is) I waited so long that I had no idea what to say so I said shit-all.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I have been saying plenty of shit, mostly shitposting, but also a lot of screaming with my whole queer self about genocide because a lot of people are screaming and I want to tell my children one day that I also screamed, for the same people, for the same reasons, because the world is wrong and it needs us to make it right.
I’ve been on Mastodon and Instagram being queer and weird and revolutionary. I’ve been reading books. I’m READING BOOKS. I haven’t been able to fully pay attention to books in any format for at least a decade, maybe two. I’ve been watching Asian dramas — I started out with a Chinese historical drama (a C-drama, if you will) and that was the gateway drug I needed and now I’ve got 170 things on my watchlists and 11 things in rotation right now and I am truly, deeply enjoying it so much.
I’m learning that the things I thought I already knew about love and joy and community were the very beginnings of a child’s thoughts, and that all the stuff I was wondering about were the fragments of dreams others have written down. I started reading bell hooks and I’m reading poetry and I am noticing such a heavy through-line between grief and love and joy and happiness and relationship, although it’s more of a web that I can only see a little of at a time.
I have been keeping track of the books, shows, movies, and music I’m engaging with this year and called it the Chronology of Finishment and yes I made up a word and I’m very happy with it.
That’s what I’ve been doing this year in between all the things needed to help a household run, and projects we’re working on. I don’t like to watch things that are dubbed, but I have AuDHD, so I have a lot of trouble just doing ONE thing at a time without distracting myself by getting lost in the middle distance. So I have been playing really simple games on one monitor while I have the show up in the other monitor, and unless I really forget to pay attention I don’t need to scrub back and watch again.
spoon-lationship
I met someone that I already knew, who coincidentally is the person that recommended the first C-drama I watched, and several months later we awkwardly queer-ed ourselves into a relationship. As you do! We have been calling it a ‘spoon-lationship,’ another word I made up that was not my best work since it’s really not easy to say aloud. It’s an acknowledgment that we burn out and sometimes we can’t send many messages or record Marco Polo videos very often because it’s just Too Much, but it’s okay because neither of us thinks the other person is avoiding them.
it’s looking like a fucking mess in here
This country, I mean. The United States is, as I’ve overheard and agree with, a failed experiment. We started out fucked up and have fucked it up worse as the consequences have repeatedly harmed everyone not on the top of the pile.
Palestinians are still being genocided. Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and all the places I’m not remembering, full of people who want their land back, their freedom back, their communities to be safe, their children to grow up well.
A better world is possible.
learning that love is integral to revolution is a mindfuck
Because it doesn’t seem like, the way that love is usually portrayed in our society, that love would do it. We get a lot of messaging about love that pretends away harm, accepts abuse, abuses others, lies, and has no truth in it. Love like that is possessive, keeping a record of wrongs. It is violent. It categorizes people as the Other. Love like that speaks without thinking further ahead than one’s feelings in the moment. Love like that hurts our own selves the same as we are hurting others.
However — real love, I am discovering as I learn from those wiser than I, is about accepting that we all harm one another. It is an acceptance that I will do harm without believing that this changes my inherent beautiful worth as a person. It is an invitation to think of my relationships as worthy of repair, rather than a burden too heavy to do the work of restoration. There are always situations in which repair can’t realistically happen, but the situations that can be repaired far outweigh those.
Living in community with others, with love as a guiding principle, is helping me remember to assume the best about my family members. It helps me see my own failures with compassion. It helps me extend compassion and understanding that uses the breadth of my soul to show up in contexts that are hard and scary.
How can I love another person if I am unable to see and love who and what I am, as I am?
I wanted to wait for an epiphany before I wrote something else, I think. I wanted to be the person having the big important pattern-seeing thoughts, but better even than that is to be learning about what’s on the other side of the epiphany — the part where you integrate the new knowledge and then practice it. I can engage in praxis meaningfully whether or not I was the first person I know who realized a thing.
epilogue:
all our time is borrowed all our love is a gift when truth comes down like a hammer all there is, is this
I have returned from thy kingdom come and all beyond that burned I’ve come from an age immersed in a mighty force of mortal rage
silence drowning out the thunderous waves of emotion violence running out of devices of faith and devotion if you could just move this lever you would not be immune to love if you could just move this lever you could stop becoming what you’re afraid of
are you ready now when the truth comes down
I have returned from thy kingdom come and all beyond that burned I’ve come from an age immersed in a mighty force of mortal rage
I cannot run I hear your call we’re only chasing shadows now that castles cannot fall
I cannot hide the walls don’t lie we can’t keep what can’t be kept to justify how long we’ve slept
I must try to flood this fire to stop the pain and start to heal to be the one you most admire
I can’t give up I have no choice when all your words fall on deaf ears I will be your voice
now we have returned to thy kingdom come and all that’s ours is learned now we come to an age where truth and love are drowning out the rage
are you ready now when the truth comes down I will be your voice
If you get this post as an email, I hope it was a good email to read. If you read this by typing my website address into the browser, I am extremely flattered. If you’re here for the first time, yes, I am like this pretty much always. And I’m glad you’re here too.
cw: this poem contains references to war, genocide, and violence
scream, scream against the dying of the light scream, against the dying scream, scream
a better world is possible it will take all of us to make it where ‘all of us’ means those who will do the work
for those without a voice for those with voices unheard un-listened to un-alived
scream, scream a better world is possible we will make it true
bring the weight of the world down on our shoulders we are Atlas we will carry it for those who have no childhood have no children have no home have no place
you taught us that humanity is cruel you showed us on our bodies how deeply you hate you cheered for death you called the cops you sent the bombs you knocked over our tents you blew it up again for good measure you drove over our bodies
we are willing and unwilling sacrifices we are finding each other we are pulling someone from rubble we are throwing water on a fire we are letting it burn
we cannot rest how can we rest
we will scream until nobody needs to scream again even when history repeats its cycle we will be screaming and screaming
peace does not arrive on its own we must weave it into reality a better world is possible only if we are willing to scream to up-end to block the road to shame you in your own home to remind you that you stole that land to never let you forget
if we remember anything if our descendants recall who we were let them remember how we screamed why we screamed
this is the blessing we leave you don’t fear don’t hesitate don’t forget let peace embrace you like our love we hope you live in the better world
Phoenix Kelley, May 5 2024
epilogue:
This is the revolution tell me Where were you When our flags turned white Cause our lips turned blue
When the pavement’s red When your friends are dead When the sky turns black While you’re in your bed
If they come for us they could come for you When they take my life they could take yours too
This is war this is war What are we fighting for What are we dying for This is war
When the bodies drop don’t look away Watch the bullets fly to the sound of grenades I will never be afraid
Remember their names don’t look away When the killing stops don’t look away Watch the victims cry to the sound of brigades I will never be okay Remember their names don’t look away
I’ve been reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of music and watching a lot of Asian dramas and not sleeping very well and having a lot of allergies and feeling depressed and having high chronic pain days and feeling extremely overstimulated by almost everything.
My collection of documents now includes a list of the (over 100) dramas I have on my watchlist(s), plus what I’m watching, and what I already finished; plus all the books I’ve read, which ones I’m reading, and my TBR list for this year. An itch needed scratching, I guess, and I’m updating the document every time I start or finish something, so it feels like I’m doing something with it.
I will leave you with a video I saved from TikTok and uploaded as an Instagram reel: Columbia University students screaming at the top of their lungs in the night at the university president’s home. Scream. Scream as loud as you can.
